On the theory of electronic source studies and the tasks of historical science: on the pages of the monograph by Yu. Yu. Yumasheva "Source Studies of the Information Age" (Moscow, 2023)

Mazur Liudmila Nikolaevna ORCID: 0000-0003-0407-3816 Doctor of History Head of the Department; Department of Documentation, Archival Science and History of Public Administration; Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin 620000, Russia, Sverdlovsk region, Yekaterinburg, Turgenev str., 4, office 482 lmaz@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Gorbachev Oleg Vital'evich ORCID: 0000-0002-2911-3100 Doctor of History Professor; Ural Humanitarian Institute; Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin 620000, Russia, Sverdlovsk region, Yekaterinburg, Turgenev str., 4, office 482 og_06@mail.ru

Over the past 30 years, the life of society has changed dramatically – its way of life, production and consumption, management and communications, "Digital" has become a key word defining cultural shifts in basic processes. Science has not been left out, although the digital turn has affected its various fields to varying degrees. The humanities are noticeably lagging behind in terms of informatization, ignoring the changes that have taken place in the information environment of society, its technologies, and remaining faithful to traditional knowledge acquisition practices developed in a written/book culture.

This statement largely concerns the Russian historical science, the theoretical and methodological apparatus of which was formed in the XIX - first half of the XX centuries. and generally retained its positivist character, despite the numerous methodological "turns" of the second half of the XX century. The basic method of historical science has been and remains source analysis, and the main information resource is a written historical source, archived or published. The expansion of the source base of historical research is very slow, and even slower is the change in tools. Hermeneutics occupies the position of the leading methodological approach, reserving the status of auxiliary methods of studying texts, including quantitative ones.

But the problem is not only in updating the methodological arsenal of the historian. We live in an era of total informatization: the information environment of science is changing, and the use of scientific literature in electronic form through network services has become a common practice. Electronic publications are increasingly found in the lists of literature and sources of scientific papers. Manuscripts and publication layouts are initially created using text editors, i.e. in electronic form. Digitized archival documents are available through the reading rooms of archival institutions and are downloaded by users from online resources of varying quality. As a result, a paradoxical situation develops – the digital environment captures all new spaces, but this process is not reflected by the historical community and is not evaluated as a factor influencing the research results.

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The changing information environment of historical science has updated the agenda related to the study of the impact of computer technology and digitalization on research practices. It is not surprising that historians, specialists in the field of historical computer science, as well as source scientists, turned out to be in the vanguard. In 2019, an issue of the journal Historical Informatics was published, devoted to the theoretical and methodological problems of the digital turn {1}, including its content, stages, and impact on the emergence of new scientific directions and the methodology of historical research ^[1-3]. The thematic issue summed up half a century of computerization experience in historical science and outlined promising areas for its development. Among others, Y. Y. Yumasheva raised the issue of the challenges facing historical science, and above all, source studies ^[4].

The methodology and methodological approaches to historical research in the digital environment have become the main subject of Y. Y. Yumasheva's reflections in the monograph "Source Studies of the Information Age" ^[5]. The book is the result of the author's long–term observations of the transformation of the digital environment, the nodal centers of which are libraries, archives, museums that preserve historical texts and artifacts ^[6-9]. Yulia Yurievna is trying to answer the question of how a historian's work with sources is changing in the face of the total digital environment.

The author's preface indicates the author's research priority – the systematic study of electronic historical sources (EII), most of the work is devoted to them. Yu.Yu. Yumasheva is fully aware that due to its novelty, the subject of study will inevitably cause discussion, and it is too early to make final judgments.

The methodological basis of the work is the theory of information, reinterpreted by I. D. Kovalchenko in application to historical sources. In accordance with it, the object of research is formulated – the entire set of electronic historical sources as an expression of the pragmatic aspect of information, and the subject (classification of sources, their types, features, methods of storage, use, etc.) is implemented in the context of the semantic and syntactic aspects of information ^{[5, p.15]}. The main purpose of the research is to develop the basic principles and algorithm for analyzing electronic sources based on classical methods of source analysis developed in the works of A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky, I. D. Kovalchenko, O. M. Medushevskaya, taking into account the specific characteristics of EII as an electronic document.

A distinctive feature of the monograph is its interdisciplinary nature. In addition to the actual source studies, the methodological apparatus of auxiliary historical disciplines is being updated. In addition, the monograph involves the theory and practice of documentation, archival science, museology, library science, computer science and information law, which allows us to identify the maximum number of specific circumstances and problems accompanying the emergence and functioning of electronic historical sources ^{[5, pp. 13-14]}.

The monograph includes five chapters consistently revealing the theoretical and methodological aspects of electronic source studies, as well as an extensive list of sources, literature and information resources, which can be safely used as a bibliographic index on the stated topic (more than 1,600 titles). The exceptional historiographical background of the monograph should be noted, which indicates the depth of immersion in the topic and the scale of the work done. No less interesting is the appendix, which provides a retrospective overview of the terms used in the monograph as synonyms of EII.

In all respects, this monograph is a landmark one, summarizing the experience of creating, storing and using electronic documents and data as historical sources and opening a new page in historical source studies.

Every reader will find useful information and food for thought in the monograph. We decided to focus on three main subjects that are of particular interest to us: the conceptual framework of a new scientific discipline often referred to as "computer source science," the classification of electronic sources, and the methods of scientific criticism of EII.

About concepts

Throughout the monograph, the author consistently solves problems related to the characterization of EII, its properties, problem areas (authenticity, integrity/completeness) that require special attention from the historian, and focuses in detail on the problems of attribution, the role of metadata as an obligatory element of EII.

Based on the concept of the "document life cycle" proposed by V. P. Kozlov ^[10], Yulia Yurievna justifies her position as an expanded version of the source analysis of electronic historical sources, which not only takes into account the stages of the document's appearance and use in accordance with the purposes of its creation, but also its storage and subsequent use to solve scientific or reference tasks. This cycle involves moving the document (source) from one place to another, which has an institutional link (for example, the office – archive of the organization – the state archive; or the author – printing house – library). The path of an electronic historical source is particularly tortuous, which requires reflection in its history (metadata). From these positions, metadata, although it contains "technical" information, actually acts as a mandatory part of an electronic document/data at all stages of the EII lifecycle. It is not included in the form, but performs official information functions {2}. In this regard, we tend to agree with the opinion of A. Rybakov ^[11], who includes "metadata" in the concept of "details" of the document.

Let us note the main results of the study, which give it fundamental importance. First of all, it is jewelry work with a conceptual framework – a historical source, a document, an electronic historical source, an electronic document, machine–readable data - all these terms are analyzed by the author in a comparative mode in historiographical and legal contexts.

Analyzing the most well-known definitions of a historical source, Yu. Yumasheva focuses on the definition of M. M. Varshavchik as the most universal from her point of view ^{[5, p. 19]}. In turn, this definition becomes the starting point for characterizing the concept of "electronic historical source", once again based on information theory: "an electronic (digital) historical source is a material carrier of historical information that arose and exists in the electronic (digital) environment as a product of certain social relations and directly reflecting one or another the side of human activity" ^{[5, pp. 23-24]}.

Obviously, the author sets himself the task of substantiating the fundamental possibility of characterizing an electronic source according to the "classical" scheme. In our opinion, the vulnerability of this position lies in linking a historical source to a material medium. Yulia Yurievna emphasizes that EII "always has a material carrier, but it is not always the same carrier" ^{[5, p. 24]}. And this is its difference from a paper document or any other traditional historical source, where the material environment and encoded information are closely related.

The desire to "pull up" the EII in terms of "materiality" to the "classical" source is understandable, but it is extremely difficult to do this. The ease of media change in the case of EII can dramatically affect the availability and integrity of the source. However, this is quite a standard situation, given the practice of working with electronic documents and data in archives ^{[5, p. 344]}.

The problem is that it is still possible to trace the change of the software shell using metadata, but not the media. And this brings us back to the discussion about the primacy of the material medium or information in the definition of the concept of "document" ^[12].

Let us also state our position: despite the importance of the material medium for characterizing the concepts of "document" or "source", information (code) and, accordingly, encoding and decoding procedures affecting the content of the document still have priority. Differences in handwritten lists of chronicles are a traditional subject of source research ^{[13, p. 47-50]}. For electronic documents existing in dozens of electronic copies, it becomes a fundamental issue related to assessing their compliance with the original (analog or electronic). It is at the stage of transcoding that the AI falls into the "gray" zone of possible transformations with the threat of loss or distortion of information. In this sense, we are inclined to support V.V. Podgaetsky's thesis about the secondary role of the material carrier in the digital age ^{[5, p. 141]}.

Even at the dawn of informatization in the 1960s, A. D. Ursul, the author of the philosophical theory of information, exploring its nature and properties, identified "four main types of information movement, one way or another related to the change of media: perception, storage, transmission and processing..." ^{[14, p. 96]} and all of them are realized "due to some material media – a substance or a field....", i.e. information cannot exist outside of one or another material shell and at the same time it does not depend on which physical medium it is fixed on. Changing the material medium can affect the quantitative characteristics of the information {3}, while transcoding can affect its quality. These properties of information (in the form of a document or data) are stored and updated in an electronic environment. A. D. Ursul emphasizes: "The structure, structure, and system are closely related to the code of transmitted and perceived information. Therefore, we can say that the code determines the quality" ^{[14, p. 47]}.

The issue of maintaining authenticity when converting and transferring EII to another medium is still waiting to be resolved, and it lies in the plane of emulation or unification of software and electronic source storage formats. Ultimately, it depends on the possibility of comparing the working image of an electronic document or data used by a historian with its original/reference, the authenticity of which must be institutionally verified.

About the benefits and problems of classifications

Classifications occupy an important place in scientific research, performing the functions of systematization of empirical material and contributing to the development and refinement of the conceptual framework. At the same time, the creation of a classification is a rather complicated procedure related to the definition of the classification object, the allocation of the basis (principle) of division, the determination of the number of levels (depth) and the naming of sections / subsections of the classification. It must meet the requirements of unambiguity, universality and unity of the foundation ^{[15, p. 16]}, which are very difficult to implement. The most common empirical classifications are designed to summarize existing experience and observational material, but they are vulnerable to criticism.

The third chapter of the monograph is devoted to the problem of EII classification. It is preceded by an overview of existing classification schemes for documents used in document science and archivistics, including electronic/machine-readable ones. The author demonstrates their diversity and interdisciplinary nature and concludes that most classifications developed in the framework of documentation and archival science are focused on practical activities and poorly adapted for the systematization of historical sources. This circumstance prompted Yu.Yu. Yumasheva to turn to classifications of historical sources based on the principles of dividing sources by material carrier, methods of encoding information and origin, understandable to historians.

I. D. Kovalchenko's typology and L. N. Pushkarev's typo-genus-species classification were used as reference schemes. Having an open structure and clearly formulated criteria for grouping historical sources, they are firmly embedded in research practices and textbooks, allowing historians to develop source systematization schemes based on them in relation to the subject under study.

The author has set herself a difficult task – to systematize such a complexly structured object as electronic sources, especially considering that they strive for a total presence in the information environment of society, displacing traditional written, visual, photo-film documents and even physical sources, i.e. they claim to be inclusive.

The classification of EII proposed by the author is based on a hierarchical principle and at the first level includes three groups, identified according to the principle of origin "initially digital"; "transformed" and "mixed". The second level of classification is represented by types familiar to historians, taking into account the peculiarities of information encoding – "written", "pictorial", "photographic, film, phonodocuments", "material", as well as "electronic sources that had no analogues in the pre-digital era". The third level corresponds to the specific classification of written sources, without affecting other types, including "electronic sources" ^{[5, p. 128]}.

The obvious incompleteness of the third level indicates the operational nature of the author's scheme – in fact, not classification, but systematization. Yu.Yumasheva writes about this: "the proposed classification covers all currently known varieties of EII throughout their existence (since about the middle of the 1940s) and needs some comments regarding the naming and description of the levels of hierarchy and the specifics of the species that determine the methods of scientific criticism" ^{[5, p.128]}.

For the same reason, it will be very difficult to use it for specific research purposes. It is unclear where databases, portals and websites should be attributed – whether to "transformed" meta-sources, or to "electronic historical sources that have no analogues in the pre-digital era" {4}? The inclusion of legislative sources in the group of office documentation is questionable. Even more problematic is the content of the "Mixed EII" group. Despite the detailed author's comments on the scheme, questions remain.

At the same time, the systematization of EII proposed in the monograph is of undoubted interest, reflecting the species diversity of electronic sources and opening up the possibility of its further refinement. Here are just some of the suggestions that arose as a result of studying the scheme. Perhaps we should abandon the first level of division, it does not work well for the typology of the EII and will lose its relevance in the near future. If we include "electronic sources" in the available source classifications, then they are logically located on the second level of the scheme under consideration, with an additional division into "Converted" and "Digital". The division of the "Transformed sources" group into two subgroups "Electronic copies" and "Meta-sources" seems reasonable. In our opinion, "machine-readable sources" are essentially a kind of "electronic copies" ^{[5, p. 127]}.

Other variants of the EII classification, including the faceted type, can be proposed. Yulia Yurievna is right – there can be many of them. The scheme developed by the author is the first step in creating a historical systematization of electronic sources, and this is its value and significance. It's always easier to follow the beaten path with proven landmarks in front of your eyes.

Interdisciplinary shock, or what a historian should know and be able to do in the "digital age"

The advent of the information age, about which the author writes ^{[5, p. 343]}, is in many ways comparable in its impact on human society with the invention of printing. The analogy is seen in the qualitatively new possibilities of copying and distributing information, which, along with impressive prospects, create an impression of chaos and haphazardness at the initial stage of the technology's existence. The claims that are made against electronic historical sources in our time, a long list of requirements for EII aimed at bringing electronic source studies closer to the "classical", the threat of the "digital dark ages" are phenomena of the same order. Yu.Yu. Yumasheva rightly states that "the forecasts of many historians about the prosperity of historical science in connection with involvement in scientific the turnover of digital information (in the form of machine-readable data, electronic documents and other information resources) did not materialize," and "... the electronic method of recording and transmitting information, which became the dominant form of encoding at the turn of the third millennium, became a source of new problems that caught many researchers off guard" ^{[5, pp. 344-345]}.

There is a great temptation to consider the current situation as a "crisis", bearing in mind the pressure of the electronic environment on the sphere of traditional source science and practice. And here another parallel suggests itself. There is a certain similarity with the crisis of positivism at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, primarily in the technological leap and expansion of the research field. At the same time, the complexities of the current situation are predominantly man-made in nature and do not call into question the cognitive potential of historical knowledge as a whole, as it was in the last century.

The historian has at his disposal numerous new or modified previous methods of analysis, he has mainly learned how to work in conditions of information redundancy. Despite the conservatism of the historical professional environment mentioned by the author, the modern historical community is much more open to interdisciplinary interaction than before. These considerations set us up for a moderately optimistic mood in the context of the emergence of new types and varieties of sources, but we must admit that at present, a full-fledged external criticism of EII is still available to few.

The book defines the boundaries of the real in dialogue with AI, captures the current parameters of this dialogue. The mobility of the information environment is more likely to be skeptical about the prospects for developing common rules for authenticating an electronic source and conditions for maintaining its integrity. On this basis, we can hardly expect that the EII source studies will be able to offer unified standards for "classical" source criticism in the information society. Rather, the book suggests that the EII faces a long struggle for a place in the sun: an extremely large number of conditions must be met in order for an electronic source to meet the criteria of primarily external source criticism and, on this basis, be taken seriously by the community of historical researchers.

Despite quite numerous attempts to organize the storage and use of EII, which are mentioned in the text of the book, we are still in a situation of an institutional vacuum in relation to this type of sources.

The idea of institutional control follows from the detailed analysis of the state of affairs in the field of storage of EII, undertaken in the fourth chapter. It is necessary and realistic, first of all, in the field of metadata unification, in terms of the requirements for electronic record keeping when receiving for storage and when issuing to the user ^{[5, p. 292]}. Moreover, according to the author, "EII enhances the role of archives and archival storage, since in this case the archives will perform the function of authenticating the type of EII, preserving it in the physical form (the original physical essence, determined by several aspects) in which it was received from the funder" ^{[5, p.134]}.

On the other hand, one should come to terms with the fact that today such control is impossible for sources created in the information space outside the direct competence of the state, i.e. reflecting the sphere of private life, and these are the vast majority. During the analysis of various aspects of EII (physical media, software, file format), their vulnerability is assessed ^{[5, pp. 138-157]}. The author's conclusion is disappointing: each of the aspects can play the role of a "weak link", and today's attempts to preserve the original appearance of the file in the appropriate software environments can only slow down the process of information loss, but are not able to stop it.

Despite the emphasis on electronic sources, the author does not consider it possible to ignore the topic of changes in the field of studying sources of the "home" era in the information age. In accordance with its task, it limits this interest to their relationship with the computer environment. At the same time, the evolution of the application of quantitative/mathematical methods and information technologies to the analysis of historical sources is of key importance for Yu.Yu. Yumasheva. In her opinion, since the early 2000s, a situation has developed where not only internal but also external criticism of sources involving information technology has become possible ^{[5, p. 34]}.

The author rightly notes that "computer source studies", for all the ambition of its adherents, can hardly claim to become a comprehensive source science discipline and solve the problems of "classical source studies" at the present time. As a result, Y. Y. Yumasheva states, historians for the most part limit themselves to the framework of "information source studies", i.e. they analyze data, but not sources as a whole ^{[5, pp. 81-84]}. This is a valid point, but how possible is a different approach in principle?

The author believes that the internal criticism of EII differs little from that of "classical" sources ^{[5, p. 340]}. Apparently, the main problems in this area are related to the noted "information redundancy" of sources ^{[5, p. 321]}. Hence the danger of an arbitrary sample of data instead of a scientifically based ("couch" research). This problem can be completely overcome if the researcher is aware of the quality of the information used.

The situation with external criticism of electronic sources is much more complicated. The author gives a detailed description of the main aspects of EII that distinguish them from the "classical" ones, deducing specific characteristics for them – authenticity, authenticity, integrity and the presence of metadata ^{[5, pp. 157-199]}. A whole program of measures is proposed to attribute the source according to these parameters. Then, in the final, fifth part of the book "Methods of scientific Criticism of electronic sources", the researcher is invited to perform all these manipulations independently when conducting external criticism. At the same time, the need for him to have various interdisciplinary competencies is stipulated. How realistic is this in the current source situation?

In a situation of "segmentation" of scientific knowledge, broad-based specialists are objectively becoming fewer and fewer. For this reason, the desire for a historian to become a generalist in the spirit of E. Le Roy Ladurie's wish in the 1960s seems impossible. The complexity of the problem we are facing requires an expansion of the network of actors capable of verifying electronic sources at the institutional level. In this regard, in the programmatic formulation of the tasks of source studies at a new stage, Yu. Yumasheva's thesis about the need for "close cooperation with specialized fund holders ... who possess modern scientific and technological research methods that can be adapted to the tasks of full-scale scientific criticism of sources" deserves special attention ^{[5, p. 84]}.

The creation of electronic resources in archives, libraries, and museums, which make it possible to assess the reliability and reliability of the descriptions contained in them ^{[5, p. 66]}, and to mobilize the efforts of specialists in various fields of knowledge for source analysis and synthesis, looks like an extremely promising task.

It would be naive in the current situation of the rapid onset of "figures" on our usual life to expect that any book, even the best one, will be able to answer all the questions and offer the historian a clear model of behavior in relation to an electronic source. Yumasheva's merit lies in the fact that she was able to summarize and consistently present the problems relevant to the current stage of development of historical science, as well as offer her own rather interesting and meaningful ways to solve them. Therefore, a peer-reviewed book is certainly important and necessary. It will become a necessary aid in the work of any researcher who engages in a dialogue about the fate of a historical source in the information age.

Notes

{1} Historical Computer Science. 2019. № 3.

{2} Along with other information and reference details of the "mark" (details No. 26-30). See: GOST R 7.0.97-2016. The national standard of the Russian Federation. A system of standards for information, librarianship, and publishing. Organizational and administrative documentation. Requirements for registration of documents" (approved by the Order of Rosstandart dated 08.12.2016 N 2004-st) (as amended on 14.05.2018) // Consultant Plus [website]. URL: https://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_216461 / (date of access: 11/30/2024).

{3} For example, compression is required if the media's information capacity does not match the size of the saved file.

{4} The monograph contains the author's comments on this issue, but we assume that the scheme should be user-friendly without additional explanations.

{5} "In the future, a historian will become a programmer, or he will be worthless" (Le Roy Ladurie E. Le territoire de l'historien. Paris, 1973 (originally published in Le Nouvel Observateur on May 8, 1968).